Being the most popular email service in the world means that Gmail has endless third-party apps, extensions, and add-ons created by developers. From adding notes and comments like Google Docs to sending voice notes via email, these are some of Gmail’s most productive new extensions.
1. Email Comments (Gmail): Similar to Google Docs reviews, but for Gmail
Have you ever received a work email from a boss or client, clicked “Reply All” for an internal discussion with your team, and forgot to delete the boss or client? What a disaster! But Gmail doesn’t leave you with many options for discussing email, other than starting a new email thread with your team or taking the conversation to a completely different platform.
Email comments are a nifty add-on to discuss an email with several people and others can’t see it. It works exactly like comments in Google Docs, but in Gmail. This extension puts a comment icon on Gmail’s sidebar. Open an email and click the icon to see the pop-up comment window for that message or thread.
In this window, participants are marked as green (comments can be viewed) or red (comments cannot be viewed). So now, while the main email thread continues the required back and forth, you can also talk to your team in the email comment window while the main message progresses.
2. Pause Gmail (Chrome) and Snailbox (Web): Pause receiving messages and deliver them later
Email is a distraction at work. Every time you receive a notification, you have to check it to make sure you haven’t missed something important. A popular productivity trick to overcome email addiction is to block messages from entering when they’re sent and let them show up on a schedule you decide.
Pause Gmail Added a useful “Pause Inbox” button under Gmail’s “Compose” button. When you want to concentrate on your work, click the button and choose how long you want the pause to be automatically lifted. Of course, you can also manually unpause at any time. There’s nothing else, which makes it one of the easiest and most elegant implementations of email pause we’ve ever seen.
Snailbox is a web service that wants to keep a batch of your emails until they can be sent on a schedule you set. You must create a schedule based on your time zone for messages to be sent at certain intervals. You can have it send multiple times a day or even every hour. At any time, you can log in to Snailbox to release a suspended batch, or click on the Snailbox tab in your Gmail mailbox to view your messages. Snailbox is free to use for two weeks, after which it costs $5 per month.
Download: Pause Gmail for Chrome (Free)
3. Vocal Email (Chrome): Send quick voice notes via Gmail that anyone can open
Sometimes, you don’t want to (or can’t) type in a long email message to explain the point you’re trying to make. Chat apps offer the ability to simply send voice messages, so why can’t you do that in email? Well, now you can use Vocal Email.
This extension adds a button to your “compose box” to record audio clips of up to one minute. Once that’s done, you can add it as an MP3 attachment or link it if you want to save space. MP3 attachments are more convenient for recipients because they don’t need to install anything to listen to your fragments; Audio files can be played from messages. If they open the link, they are taken to the Vocal web app, where the clip is stored on your account and can be replayed forever.
The free version of Vocal allows the recording 50 one-minute audio clips per month. The Business plan allows recording 200 clips per month, with no limit on recording time, and adds perks like automatic transcription in the Vocal app.
Download: Vocal for Chrome (Free)
4. Contact Notes CRM (Gmail): Write private notes for contacts on desktop and phone
For those who use their inbox exclusively to talk to customers and customers, you need a way to add your notes to each contact. Some extensions already do this, but you can’t access those notes when you’re using Gmail from your phone.
However, add-ons from the Google Workspace marketplace are available not only on desktops but also on Gmail phones. These apps fit into the Gmail sidebar, which is one of Gmail’s best new features. To install the Contact Notes CRM app and set it up, you still need to go through Gmail on your desktop for the first time.
Once it’s working, open an email and launch Contact Notes CRM through the sidebar. The panel is where you write notes for this contact, so you can jot down personal points as you interact with them. If you’re in your primary inbox, the panel shows all your recent notes across your contacts.
5. Mailflow (Chrome): Powerful email management system to organize projects
Mailflow is an extremely powerful email management system that works in Gmail to organize your messages, share tasks and schedules with your team, and create tables of relevant information from your emails. If you don’t want multiple extensions, it also includes some of the features of the other add-ons in this article.
In order to organize your emails, you have to choose from several templates to create a project: email only, project, simple CRM, support, recruitment, or tasks. This creates different types of email management systems. You can add any email to a project, and Mailflow automatically extracts essential elements like attachments, due dates, personal information in signatures, and more.
When you open an email, you can enhance it in a number of ways with Mailflow. Highlight any text in the message to turn it into a note or task. You can add comments to any email, just like Google Docs comments. If the project is shared with others, you can assign tasks to members or work directly on comments and comments for them.
All in all, Mailflow did a great job of organizing the project’s emails into a concise, easy-to-understand system. By sharing with colleagues, you can also save yourself from the endless back and forth of forwarding, editing, threading, and attachments.
The free version of Mailflow lets you manage 25 email threads and have up to 5 free guests. In our opinion, this is enough for individuals to organize two or three projects in a system that makes sense to them. However, if you want to use it with your team to manage more projects, purchase unlimited Mailflow Pro for $9 per month.
Download: Mailflow for Chrome (Free)
Don’t install too many extensions!
While we’ve recommended a few different Gmail add-ons and extensions in this article, you might want to be more picky about which ones to install. Although all of these extensions are useful, keep in mind that they can slow down your browser. That said, installing the Google Workspace Marketplace add-on won’t have that effect, so enjoy.
